Hometown: Cedar Grove, WI
Branch: U.S. Army 
Unit: Company I, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division
Military Honors: Purple Heart
Date of Sacrifice: July 16, 1944 - KIA in Esglandes, France
Age: 26
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

Ellsworth De Bruine was born on January 12, 1918—months before the end of what H.G. Wells famously predicted would be “the war that will end war” (World War I, 1914-1918).

Ellsworth’s parents Willis and Sadie (Schreurs) De Bruine, along with his younger siblings Bernice, Roland, Lois, and Glenn, ran a dairy farm outside of Cedar Grove, Wisconsin—a small village of Dutch immigrants established two miles inland from the shores of Lake Michigan.

Besides his work on the farm, Ellsworth found work at the local shoe factory. Youngest sister Lois recalls that Ellsworth didn’t have much interest in farming. He loved to tinker and fix watches, clocks, and “he even built a radio from scratch. Mom told him the radio was already invented.”

War Readiness

Contrary to H.G. Wells’ prediction, the winds of war were blowing strong in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by the time Ellsworth became a young man. America was still trying to recover from the decade-long Great Depression (1929-1939), and its military was small and already obsolete—woefully ill-prepared for a conflict on a global scale.

According to Ken Burns in the PBS documentary, The War, “In 1939, the United States Army ranked thirty-ninth in the world, possessing a cavalry force of fifty thousand and using horses to pull the artillery.”

In September 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act, the first peacetime draft in the country’s history. Ellsworth De Bruine was drafted into the U.S. Army and reported for duty on August 4, 1941— four months before the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and America’s official declaration of war.

Along with other inductees, De Bruine boarded the Hiawatha train to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was sent for basic infantry training to Camp Wheeler in Macon, Georgia. He was later transferred to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he was assigned to Company I of the 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division.

De Bruine and the 39th Infantry Regiment’s “Fighting Falcons” saw their first combat action as part of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. In letters home, De Bruine described the regiment’s worst day, when they were shelled continuously for 24 hours.

After victory in North Africa, De Bruine’s 9th Infantry Division was sent across the Mediterranean to take part in Operation Husky—the Allied invasion of Sicily launched on July 10, 1943. The liberation of Sicily from Nazi occupation cost the Allies nearly 25,000 casualties but was a strategically important step in liberating all of Europe.

Liberating Europe

Ellsworth De Bruine survived the battle and sailed for England with the 9th Division to train for the D-Day invasion of France—code-named Operation Overlord. The risky Allied operation that would determine Europe’s future was the largest amphibious invasion in military history.

PFC De Bruine’s regiment landed on the Normandy beach code-named UTAH on June 10, 1944 (D-Day plus 4). He and the 39th would fight to seal off France’s Cotentin Peninsula and capture the critical port city of Cherbourg. Ellsworth ended several of his letters home with, “I hope that God sees fit to end this war soon.”

The brutal “Battle of the Hedgerows” followed. In the farm fields of France, the German army had entrenched itself behind hedgerows of earth and brush that reached 15 feet in height. To free the French people from Nazi occupation, more than 15,000 Americans were lost in the fighting from July 7-19, 1944.

Among them was PFC Ellsworth De Bruine, who was killed by mortar fire in the town of Esglandes, three miles northwest of Saint-Lô.

News Reaches Home

In Cedar Grove, the De Bruine family had moved to a different dairy farm since Ellsworth had left for the war. According to Ellsworth’s sister Lois, their mother had prepared a room for him in the new home. Lois recounts the day her family received the news from the War Department:

Dad had to get chicken feed from the Co-op. I had to go along to get some groceries. All the way home, a car followed us. I said to Dad that he was still following us. [At home, the driver] gave Dad the telegram that said Ellsworth had been killed in action in Normandy. Dad came out to tell Glenn and I, we threw down silage for the cows and got them in the barn ready to milk while Dad walked to the oats field to tell Mom (she was putting up shocks). We did the milking. Nobody talked or ate supper. The next day was Sunday. Mom & Dad didn’t go to church but said Rolly, Glenn, and I should go. We sat in the back seat.

Returning Home

At the time of his death, PFC Ellsworth W. De Bruine was buried alongside his fellow soldiers in Sainte Mère Eglise, France. His remains were returned to his family in Cedar Grove, where he was laid to rest on July 16, 1948—exactly four years after his death.

His sister Lois remembers:

On a warm summer night in 1948, we gathered at the railroad station watching the train’s bright light come slowly down the tracks. The box car was opened, and [there were] three caskets with flags over them, with a member of the Armed Forces standing at attention next to each casket. It [Ellsworth’s casket] was put in the hearse and the train went on to bring the others to their homes.

In honor of PFC De Bruine’s service and sacrifice, chimes were installed at Cedar Grove’s Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The Vander Jagt-DeBruine American Legion Post 338 in Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, was named in his honor.

Some 50 years after PFC De Bruine landed at UTAH beach to liberate Europe, a high school student with a metal detector found De Bruine’s dog tags in the sand. The tags with De Bruine’s name, serial number, and person to notify were returned to his family in September 1996.

Sources
Details and card photo provided by Mr. Robert Brusse, PFC De Bruine’s nephew
9th Infantry Division in WW2: 39th Infantry Division
National Archives, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home: World War II: D-Day, The Invasion of Normandy
The Sheboygan Press, July 14, 1948: Obituaries: Pfc. Ellsworth DeBruine
The Sheboygan Press, August 7, 1944: Cedar Grove Man Killed In Action
The Sheboygan Press, Nov. 4, 1948: Cedar Grove News
Burial Site: Find a Grave